Foreign tourists bring Andalucía more than 730 million euros every month

Spending by international visitors registered a record increase in October, up 4.3 per cent

Foreign tourism provides a cash injection of an average of 732 million euros a month for Andalusian holiday destinations, says the latest tourist spending survey compiled by the central government. Up to October this year the sum spent by international visitors on holiday in Andalucía was more than 7.3 billion euros, an increase of 4.3 per cent. The report points out that this figure represents half of the growth in tourist spending in Spain as a whole, where international tourists spent almost 47 billion euros between January and October.

Andalucía is ahead of all of Spain’s seaside holiday destinations and in general terms is behind only the region of Madrid for tourist spending. In the first ten months of the year each tourist spent an average of 1,016 euros on their holiday, while the average daily spend was 90 euros.

The increase can be put down to an especially good October when spending in Andalusian holiday destinations was up by more than 12 per cent on the previous year, four per cent more than the national rise. In fact in October foreign tourists spent 711 million euros in Andalucía, just over 15 per cent of the total for Spain. That month the average spent per tourist was 956 euros (up 2 per cent) and daily spend was up to almost 100 euros, almost ten per cent more than the previous year. The central government has put these results down to the spending of British tourists.

British market soars

The regional councillor for Tourism, Commerce and Sport, Luciano Alonso, stressed last week that “the region has recorded the best increase in income from international tourists ever for the January to October period, greater even that the increase in 2007, before the crisis set in”.

Alonso highlighted that so far this year foreign tourism had brought Andalucía some 300 million euros more than in the same period of 2010, and only Andalucía and Madrid had passed the 1,000 euros per tourist milestone.

Alonso added that these results confirmed the positive trend reflected by the recent Frontur survey that indicates a 9.9 per cent increase in the arrival of international tourists in Andalucía in October, with an especially positive response from the British market, with an extra 57,000 tourists.